Answer to a "what does that word mean" (pillow blocks)

[Lane Gray]

Kinda wish that one thread hadn't closed, but I'll answer the question here (and try to answer any others).
Here's the pillow blocks on a Zum. It's the thing I'm touching. It might be technically a trunnion.


It means the blocks that the changer axle sits in.

[Carl Mesrobian]

...It might be technically a trunnion.
...

Only if your guitar is a real cannon

[Ned McIntosh]

No disrespect to all of you guys in the US of A, but Down Under we'd just call them "axle blocks", on the not unreasonable logic that they are blocks which hold the axle. Axle - block...axle-block. There's an axle, and there's a block to hold it...and there's no pillow anywhere to be seen.

Every time I see the American term "pillow-block" I keep thinking "where does the pillow go in that thing anyway?"

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said England and America were two great countries separated only by a common language. He could equally have been speaking of the US and Australia.

[Jon Light (deceased)]

It seems that everybody is talking about something different.

[Carl Mesrobian]

I need one of those when I go on the road for 5 days!

[Lane Gray]

Ned, I'm with you. Axle block makes more sense.
But pillow block is the term in common use.
Like Webster, I'll deal with prescriptive dictionary use.

[Lane Gray]

Carl, scroll down to the "camelback suspension", see part identified as #8
http://www.stengelbros.com/Mack-Suspensions.htm
I KNEW I wasn't making stuff up. In the intervening centuries, it's become also the female half (often calling the male half a spindle).

[Ned McIntosh]

It's a good thing we're talking about a "pillow-block" and not "Pillow-Blocking", which John's photo seems to imply.

Personally I prefer palm-blocking (which I can do) to pick-blocking (which I struggle with).

Using a pillow for blocking would require a whole new set of fine and coarse motor-skills and I'm not sure I have enough years left in me to learn them!

[Carl Mesrobian]

Carl, scroll down to the "camelback suspension", see part identified as #8
http://www.stengelbros.com/Mack-Suspensions.htm
I KNEW I wasn't making stuff up. In the intervening centuries, it's become also the female half (often calling the male half a spindle).

See parts 45 and 64 http://www.sawcenter.com/cs4k_1.pdf

That's a trunnion in table saw world

It's all good - I know what part you mean. If I needed one I'd use the terminology that the manufacturer uses, that's all. I just call it "the block holding the changer axle", which starts to sound Down Under. If I needed one, would I have to order one from Down Under???I think of pillow block as a stationary piece that holds an end of a shaft, as in a pillow block bearing, which is what the changer end is doing.

Regarding Ned's comment..

I probably called them "axle blocks" before I learned what they really were

You should try "pillow pick blocking"

[Lane Gray]

In fact, one could argue that we call them pillow blocks because they are, in fact, pillow blocks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillow_block_bearing

[Georg Sørtun]

Apart from that the changer axle usually doesn't rotate in the pillow blocks on a steel, I think the reference is fine Lane

[Lane Gray]

I've seen a Perm that did. But a couple fingers were seized to the shaft.

[chris ivey]

i'm sorry that thread closed too. we could have gotten a whole dictionary of terms out of lane alone.

[Mike DiAlesandro]

Lane, what MXR box is mounted to your steels leg?

[Lane Gray]

Bradshaw/Dunlop resonator pedal.

[James Sission]

It seems that everybody is talking about something different.

[Ned McIntosh]

At least they're not nover-trunnions from the Turbo-Entabulator!

[chris ivey]

why does this thread continue?

[Lane Gray]

Topic drift?
Smartassery?
Hell, I don't mind. And if anyone has any other "what do you mean by 'x'?" questions, go ahead and put them here

[Charlie McDonald]

Such topics help define terms for a glossary, something that would have to happen on pedal steel before a definitive paper could be writ.
It took this long before copedent could be agreed upon.

[chris ivey]

ha! not to me.

[Lynn Stafford]

I used to design machinery for a living. Here is a photo of a Sealmaster pillow block bearing. This style of bearing is used through out the industry. I tend to believe someone in the steel guitar building community must have decided to name the pillars used in supporting the changer with the same designation.

[Herb Steiner]

Topic drift?
Smartassery?
Hell, I don't mind. And if anyone has any other "what do you mean by 'x'?" questions, go ahead and put them here

I, as a lover of the English language, a good speller, and one who's been accused of "usin' high-falutin' words" more than a few times, I want to thank Lane for "trunnion," as well as for more-than-several other words he's brought to the Forum that have taken me to the dictionary and been loaded into my own personal database for future use.

I'd like to see initiated the Forum's "Ernest Hemingway Award."* Recipient emeritus would undoubtedly be Bill Hankey, but I'd nominate Lane for this honor, should it be initiated. Expressions of approbation, anyone?

*NOTE: H.L. Mencken said of Hemingway "He was never known to use a word that would drive a reader to the dictionary."

[Jerry Jones]

My understanding is that a "pillow block" almost always contains a bearing or a bushing, whereas, in the linear motion industry a "shaft support block" is used to describe a fixture holding a non-rotating shaft. I like pillar block.

[Charlie McDonald]

Pillar block--mystery solved.

Approbation; learn a new word every day. I approbe.